A Guide to Internal Family Systems: Parts Work

Through practicing psychotherapy and somatic work with others, I have found that humans have the remarkable ability to feel, want, and think many opposing ways, and often feel them at the same time.

We often experience things in the moment, then end up with both angry and empathic reactions. We may simultaneously feel relief that an event occurred while also feeling anxious about the event's outcomes. We may want to speak up for ourselves while being overwhelmed with silence.

I see clients in cyclical patterns that regularly leave them feeling frustrated and stuck.

They share that they don't know how or why they keep falling back into these familiar ways of being or feeling.

While they might “intellectually” understand their experiences, they feel emotionally disconnected from what their logical self is trying to share with them. Through this work, I've come to sincerely believe that Internal Family Systems is a deeply valuable framework to help us better integrate these disjointed experiences and move into a way of living that feels more compassionate and whole.

What Are Parts and How Are They Created?

Internal Family Systems (IFS) can create a structure for understanding the complexity of the human mind and explain why we have the internal experiences that we do. IFS proposes a theory that the human psyche is made up of many “parts.”

These parts are understood to be developed during different lived experiences and are brought on to help us navigate new situations in our life. Parts start presenting as soon as we are conscious, and a need for making choices starts to develop in early childhood.

The number of parts that we have are somewhat endless and rooted in very early memories. In therapy, we tend to work with the parts of us that are developed during adverse experiences or traumatic moments. A lot of the parts that show up in this work are parts that were developed out of a need for greater safety. We can also relate to these parts as “coping strategies” or “defense mechanisms”.

Here are just a few ways our parts can manifest:

Protectors:

If we overheard nighttime arguments as children, we might develop a part called a "protector" that helps us deal with the overwhelm, fear, or confusion a little kid might have when grownups are dysregulated to the point of yelling. There are many ways a protector may show up to help, but one style we might see could be through dissociation. 

This might mean our brain and body collaborate to tune out and shut down anything happening around us. During dissociation, we are often unaware of our internal and external experiences. We tend to go to a "zoned out" place or try to access "nothingness."

For a kid who really needs to fall back to sleep and feel a sense of ease, dissociation could be helpful. When we figure out this way to navigate an overwhelming situation, it's understandable that we would begin to apply this strategy to any other scenario that might feel similarly overwhelming, fearful, or confusing.

Firefighters:

In response to a difficult experience, we can develop “firefighters.” These parts tend to be hyper-focused on dousing any pain experienced on the inside IMMEDIATELY. Self-harm is a strategy used by our firefighters that people find helpful in the short term to release a build-up of pressure during a very stressful moment. This part showing up can sometimes be where kids may learn to pull out hair or scratch their skin as a way of self-soothing.

Cheerleaders:

There are parts that are adaptive in a different way and serve as our personal cheerleaders. These parts were born the first time we made an "A" on a test and felt a sense of deep accomplishment. These parts remind us of our strengths, abilities, and wholeness.

Exiles:

Exiles may be our ideas of the younger versions of ourselves that went through hard experiences and felt scared. These parts continue to carry the burdens of our past wounds. Exiled parts are usually the inner child the protectors, firefighters or cheerleaders are trying to keep safe.

Wise Self:

The wise self is the most consistent and unchanging part we may have. I like to use the metaphor of the wise self as the sky. The sky is always spacious and open. The sky has the space to handle all kinds of weather––and sometimes holds many kinds of weather simultaneously (like when it's sunny, raining, and thundering all at once).

The sky never becomes the weather. The weather comes and goes and the sky remains the same. Our internal parts are like the weather, and we are the sky containing all of it. We can experience cheerleaders trying to encourage us, protectors making sure we stay safe, firefighters dampening acute stress, and exiles feeling scared, all while our wise self observes.

Why Parts Work?

It’s pretty fair to say that most of the strategies that worked for us as kids, our parts attempt to keep going in our grown-up lives. A major hiccup about this is that the impact and outcomes we experience as kids do not play out the same in our adult experiences. If I am in an important conversation with my partner one evening and my nervous system starts to pick up on the kind of tension that led to my parents fighting at night when I was younger, my nervous system is likely to go “okay, we know what’s about to happen - sound the protective parts to handle the situation!” If I shut down, self-harm or tune out the way I may have as a child, the impact is likely going to be that my grown-up self experiences more stress, anxiety, and avoidance.

While my parts are genuinely trying to me cope - sometimes they accidentally disconnect me from the resources in my life that would be more helpful.

Being able to connect, hear and respond to my partner during an important conversation is much more helpful for me as an adult than it was as a kid. The goal in this work is never to get rid of, reject, or silence a part of ourselves. In our society, we have been encouraged and rewarded for getting rid of the parts of ourselves that are not seemingly productive. While many of us have strived to dismember the parts of us we have learned to reject, we have also learned that it simply does not work.

When we reject parts of ourselves, we tend to either experience chronic dissociation depression and/or become deeply hyper-vigilant about this part (often to the point of obsession and compulsion). When we begin to relate to these parts as individuals we are in relationship to, we are more able to connect with them in a way that doesn’t feel like we are being hijacked by the emotional experiences that the parts represent.

By creating a bit of distance between the Self and our parts through personifying them, we can find enough space to learn about them and to even collaborate with them, build compassion for the versions of ourselves that we have rejected, and increase a sense of integration where all of the parts are working together for the better of the whole.

Ways to Practice Parts Work

I find in my work with clients that we often are not aware of what part is in the driver’s seat. In fact, I’ve learned that most people tend to be blended with their parts, forgetting that the Self is ever-present. This can lead to internal thoughts that are rigid and often unkind to us. When we start to see that our thoughts are rigid and all or nothing, we may use that observation to prompt the question “What part is coming up right now?”

Parts are also found in our bodies. Many clients that choose to work with me have struggled with tolerating feeling things inside their bodies. When we start to lean into the compassionate and mindful framework of IFS, we may start to tolerate noticing felt sensations. A tense muscle in my shoulder or tightness in my chest may also serve as a trailhead to discover what parts are at work at the moment. I may choose to internally ask my body “what are you trying to communicate with me?” and I am often pleased with how quickly the message makes sense to me.

In this practice, we begin to talk with and build relationships with these parts. In my office, I encourage people to invite the parts to be seen and heard. In sessions, people will draw visual representations of the parts, give them shapes, colors, and personalities, and explore where in their own bodies these parts tend to show up (think the movie Inside Out but experienced in your own body).

One of the reasons I love IFS is that IFS emphasizes that we all have the capacity and ability to integrate our parts. I tend to lean towards offering modalities that people can connect to and use outside of the container for therapy.

With that in mind, there are many books and resources that help introduce folks to IFS. For people with a history of complex or developmental trauma, it can be helpful to access a support person for this work. Co-regulation with someone whose nervous system is familiar to yours can create a little extra padding when navigating parts of ourselves that are protecting us from vulnerable moments in our life. If having support to begin IFS is something that feels important to you, you are welcome to check out my IFS meditation or you might choose to reach out to learn about working together 1:1.